Thursday, June 11, 2009

Late night open thread

Tonight a look into the amazing collection of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Johnny has a tremendous fascination with space and planets and galaxies and the like. He was very privileged earlier in his life to work in a small capacity on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and The Jupiter Aurora project along with a probe to Mercury with some of the brightest minds on this planet. You can see many of NASA's Hubble collection here. Before bed tonight, an image of Supernova SN1987A or as we like to call it, Lloyd.

Supernova SN1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Glittering stars and wisps of gas create a breathtaking backdrop for the self-destruction of a massive star, called supernova 1987A, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy. Astronomers in the Southern hemisphere witnessed the brilliant explosion of this star on Feb. 23, 1987.